From inside the flap

THE LEGEND OF FRANKENSTEIN continues….

In all the world, one monster towers over all. This is the nameless creature created by Victor Frankenstein. This is the Thing that should not live… but does!

You’ve read Mary Shelley’s world-famous novel, “Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus” and you’ve seen the nameless creature created by Victor Frankenstein. But what happened next? THE LEGEND OF FRANKENSTEIN Book II, MONSTER OF THE WORLD, provides that answer.

In the first part of the series, the Monster found a new purpose to live and sought out allies to assist him. Along the way, he also clashed with ghouls, mad scientists, and maniacs. Now, follow the Monster as he continues to search for the knowledge, the means, and the funds necessary to create a mate with which to share the world.

Hunted, haunted, rejected by the society of men, the Monster of Frankenstein forms a partnership with a diabolical doctor. When this partnership fails, he travels from Europe to America, hoping to find the knowledge, the means, and the funds necessary to create a mate with which to share the world. And such secrets as he desires can only be found in HP Lovecraft’s city of Arkham! From there, the Monster plunges into the swamps of the Deep South and strikes out for the Wild West, hoping to make a new home for himself…and profit from hunting gun-toting outlaws!

With links to Perry Lake’s earlier LEGEND OF DRACULA series, THE LEGEND OF FRANKENSTEIN forms an epic saga of historical horror and sinister schemes in concord with Mary Shelley’s original classic. Read MONSTER OF THE WORLD today! Book III coming soon!

MONSTER OF THE WORLD (Excerpt)

THE CIRCUS OF KING CARLOS

(With Larry Johnson)

1. Freaks Like Us

I sat one evening by our camp, reading a newspaper which the dwarf Gugel had absconded with from the town earlier that day. He now sat cutting up some turnips and a bit of bacon and dropped them in the pot for our stew.

I perused a report from England of the delayed return of the Erebus and the Terror on their arctic mission of discovery from the year before. Having sojourned in that bleak realm for a time, I was ever interested in any intelligence concerning a certain black structure which I once discovered.

Finished reading, I used the paper to light the fire. I mentioned briefly to my companion the news of the day.

"Did they ever find that hole in the world?" Gugel asked, ignorantly.

"The Erebus and the Terror seek the Northwest Passage, not a hole. Thou art confused with the legend of Arne Saknusson."

"Yes, if you say so. But if your brain is so great to know all these things, why are we not sleeping in a warm bed instead of these thrice-cursed mountains?"

Gugel stood barely three feet tall. With his bald head, beady eyes, leering grin, and beaky nose, he was fit only to be displayed as a freak. But what made him a monster, in my eyes, was his index finger. When his masters captured me I had the opportunity to bite off that finger, but his master, one Hugo Krantz, PhD, Mainz, Ingolstadt, and the Sorbonne, successfully sewed it back on. Only a scar gave evidence that the finger had ever been removed, but now Gugel was an assembled little monster, as I was a giant one.

For the last year, since leaving Averoigne, Gugel and I lived on the road, hunting or stealing what we could to live. We first traveled west to the lush Aquitaine and then south to Gascony, then to Languedoc and now through the Pyrenees, skirting the tiny nation of Andorra and the tinier nation of Ballade. Vaguely I thought to enter Spain and make my way to Toledo where I hoped to scour the libraries of that great university town, seeking the forgotten ancient lore which had long been my goal. It was the next day that we found ourselves within a few miles of Puigcerta when we heard the clamor of a caravan along the mountainous road.

My usual response to traffic along the road was to flee into the first available crevice or clump of brush and many of both were to be found in this hill country. But as I had the chance to spot the caravan and confirm in my mind that these were Gypsies, I stayed my ground.

Once, nearly three decades before, I had met up with a band of these wayfarers and, after some argument-for these people are not readily willing to bring outsiders into their midst-they agreed to let me travel with them as their strongman. Passing from town to town I performed feats of strength and endurance whilst under the guise of "The Masked Giant" and the coins I earned the Gypsies greedily accepted as the price of my keep. I thought I might do well to reprise my role as it would certainly make travel much easier.

As I knew some few of their words, I called out a hello to the lead vardo-covered wagon-which pulled up, the driver looking afright. In an instant, the entire tribe faced us with many of the men freely holding knives, axes, and any sort of cudgel they might improvise. Gugel muttered a curse, I think directed at me.

The Gypsy hetman came forth and introduced himself as King Carlos of the Skgany. Perhaps his title was so grand to compensate for his stature, for like Gugel, he was a dwarf, albeit a head taller.

"What are you?" he asked suspiciously, in his high-pitched voice, "What manner of creature are you?"

Ere I could answer him, an old woman, much bangled and wearing a bright scarf, spoke up. "He is a demon!" she declared, haughtily, "A thing from the Land of Darkness! Rebuke him and let him not trouble us!"

So, there was a witch amongst them, as there always was. Unlike old Molga-who I knew in Bohemia, this one was short and fat and had two good eyes which she used to glare at me.

Yet there was more than simple hatred in that glare, yet not quite fear. She knew through some ability or sense or guess that I was unlike anything she'd dealt with before, or had even heard of.

The diminutive hetman seemed to consider her words. Indeed, many of the Gypsies made various gestures with their hands and fingers which I knew of old to be magical defenses against evil spirits. Gugel nervously backed away, looking for a place to hide.

"Another phuri dai said much the same thing once," I said, "Her name was Molga."

The diminutive hetman gasped and the witch's eyes widened.

"Molga?" Carlos asked, disbelieving, "You knew her?"

"I did some time agone."

"Yes, it would be agone since she's rested in the ground a quarter century."

"Bah!" the witch said, spitting upon the ground, "Molga was too talented to be bested by the likes of you. I taught her everything she knew!"

I thought that statement odd, for though this shuvani was not young, she did not appear nearly as old as the hag Molga.

"You are a demon of the Land of Darkness!" the witch repeated, seemingly quoting Molga's words of thirty years prior. "Return now or face your brothers who are under my command!"

"I am no demon and no reanimated corpse, as I once told Molga," I said, "but a man of great height and a visage deformed by fire."